by J S Khan
Here’s some saliva for a blind eye:
on Christmas Day, 1560, Peruvian natives
invented El Dorado, the City of Gold,
die Fabel vom Goldland El Dorado,
(as Herzog has it, or to quote precisely),
and Aguirre went mad on the river as a caravel
crucified itself, a jungle came unfleshed,
and monkeys invaded the Spanish flotilla,
overrunning the last refuge of white men
and their daughters, laughing, or else,
seeming to laugh, which is just as bad.
Despite this, sperm banks still seek
a few good men, only check the ads.
Powerful—but in the wrong context.
On the other hand, flattery is nice.
These days, no sharp delineation of void
and land remains, thanks to the cunning
of resentful savages, but educated idiots
chatter on my stairwell too. Can you believe
blurb is a word? The coffee pots breathe
like Darth Vader in my kitchen, and I ponder
ancient moralities carved in their usual
binary codes. Lexicon is not even in my
lexicon. Wake me up on Judgment Day.
J S Khan’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in MQR, Fourteen Hills, Post Road Magazine, BRUISER MAG, BULL, and Burial Magazine.